


It'll Store Our Brains in Mason Jars

by DragonThistle



Category: Hollow Knight (Video Games)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Collector headcanons??? I guess??, Inappropriate Use of Void
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-06
Updated: 2020-12-06
Packaged: 2021-03-09 23:01:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,915
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27924184
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DragonThistle/pseuds/DragonThistle
Summary: The little knight finds more than The Collector in the Tower of Love.
Comments: 6
Kudos: 107





	It'll Store Our Brains in Mason Jars

**Author's Note:**

> Was watching my friend fight The Collector and she made a comment about a thing and I had to write something.
> 
> Title taken from "Lovecraft in Brooklyn" by The Mountain Goats

The fight went poorly. 

The knight was unprepared for this…Collector to hurl its precious jars of specimens at them, allowing them to smash into the floor and free their occupants. If anything, the freed—and then promptly slain—bugs only seemed to drive the Collector further into desperate madness. In the struggle to combat enemies from all sides, the knight found themselves losing ground and sought an escape route, trying to find a way to retreat and regroup and come back with a better strategy. 

The Collector had no such patience. 

A baulder slammed into the knight’s midriff before they could block it, smashing them into a wall so that their head cracked against the stonework. Dazed, they collapsed to the floor, the inky darkness of their carapace shuddering as the stability of their form wavered and threatened to collapse. Black seeped into the corners of their vision and their nail felt heavy in their hand as they made to stand. But before they could get their feet under them completely, the Collector plucked them from the floor with a deft and nimble fingers.

Cold hands, as cold as the knight themself, pinned the knight’s arms to their sides and _squeezed_. The knight struggled, kicking their feet and thrashing, trying to twist away. The Collector chittered at them, tilting its head as it observed the knight closely. The knight bristled and made a hissing noise but the Collector didn’t seem to notice or care. It simply carried the knight to one of its massive jars, dropped them inside, and slammed a lid into place with a resonating clang and the click of a lock. The knight scrambled up and thew themselves against the glass, only to bounce off and go sprawling against the bottom of the jar. The Collector stared at them for a moment or two longer, then it seemed as if madness took a hold of it once again and it skipped away, clambering around its sea of jars. 

With another bitter and threatening hiss, the knight hefted up their nail.

Unacceptable.

No simple glass jar was going to hold _them_. 

Their ever faithful nail smashed into the curve of the jar, shattering the glass with a single blow and sending transparent shards spiraling through the air. The Collector’s burning white eyes snapped towards them and it screamed—that desperate, fevered need to accomplish what it so desired making the air ripple with the volume of it. It began charging across the lids of their jars and making impossible leaps to cross the room to its escaping prey, all of its limbs moving in a wild and terrifying flurry. The knight braced, pulling on the energy of their SOUL to Focus, letting their power stitch their battered body back together again, solidifying their shivering form. 

As the Collector approached, the knight tilted their nail back, swinging it forward again in a mighty arc. It smashed satisfyingly into the Collector’s face as it approached, sending droplets of void splattering across the shards of glass and the floor. The Collector fell back, fingers bent to dig into the floor and slow itself as it skidded across the stone, back arched like a feral beast, screeching at the knight, fully enraged. It charged again, even faster than before, shedding streaks of void from the side of its face. The knight swung again, lunging forward with determined jab, but the Collector moved too fast, slithering out of range, leaping overhead, and slamming its entire body into the knight and pinning them to the floor with all four hands. The edge of the knight’s nail dug into their already bruised carapace and they threw their head back, trying to jab the Collector with their horns, trying everything they could to free themselves. But the Collector was not going to be fooled twice, despite its desperate madness.

It kept the knight pinned with three of its icy hands while the fourth wrenched open a trap door in the floor. There was only darkness below and a disconnected fear bit deep into the knight’s core, every part of them rejecting the idea of being thrown into that seemingly bottomless darkness. But the Collector readily ignored their struggles and hurled the knight through the trap door. 

By the time the knight had gotten to their feet, the door was shut and it was too high for them to get to, even with all their abilities. Bristling at their predicament, the knight looked around for another way out.

The room they were in seemed to be another part of the Tower of Love and a further extension of the collection. Jars were stacked upon jars in half collapsed piles against the walls, black ooze leaking through cracks in some of them and pooling in crevices of the floor. Some of the jars had bugs in them, twitching or struggling or laying lethargically in puddles of liquid Void. A few of the bugs had tubes punched through their exoskeletons, dripping more Void into their bodies. It was profane and sick; a perversion of both a bug’s life and the Void itself, as twisted as infection from the Radiance. 

The knight, though appearing aloof to most matters, found themself recoiling at the notion that the Collector was trying to use Void to preserve the creatures of Hollownest. 

They turned away and froze.

One of the jars was resting at the bottom of a nearby pile, placed there recently given the lack of dust. It was tilted slightly, in danger of falling over and rolling away, and there were tubes wedged into the lid, dangling from the dark shadows in the ceiling and hanging freely inside the jar. A steady drip of Void was feeding from the tubes and apparently had been for a while because the jar was half filled with a solid pool of black. The bug inside was pressed against the upper curve of the jar, limbs scrabbling against the glass in order to try and stay above the rising Void. Black streaks stained his shell, leaving abnormal blotches across the blue carapace, but the little knight would recognize that bandana anywhere.

It was Quirrel.

He’d apparently noticed their approach because he looked up from the encroaching tide of darkness and offered the knight a wane smile,

“Oh, ah, hello friend…I’m afraid you’ve caught me at a rather—“ He slipped, plunging into the blackness for a moment before he managed to brace himself against the wall again, sputtering and dripping, “—a rather difficult predicament. I’m not quite sure how I came to be here and I see to have, ah, misplaced my nail…” His grip failed again but he only partially slid into the pool before stopping himself.

The last time the knight had seen Quirrel had been at the Blue Lake, sitting alone on the shore. When they’d returned later, Quirrel had been gone. Only his nail had remained, planted firmly in the ground. Where he’d gone, the knight had never known.

Until now.

And seeing Quirrel in such a predicament made the knight…feel.

It was hot, somewhere inside them. A burning sort of hot, like the unfortunately familiar sting of the acid pools they’d become acquainted with in their travels. It was a heat that chewed on their core and made them want to break something, to destroy until nothing remained for them to tear apart.

There was something upstairs that would satisfy that urge quite nicely.

But first…

The knight adjusted their stance, aiming the point of their nail towards the seam between the lid and the jar. Their hand had always been steady with their weapon and that was no different now. But they were keenly aware that if their nail slipped, they could do grievous harm to Quirrel.

Quirrel himself seemed to realize what they were doing and stammered, “N-now, hold on a moment, I’m sure we can find a solution that would be better—and much safer—than to take your nail to—EEP!” He flinched, crossing his arms over his head and falling into the dark pool as the knight drove their nail into the jar. Their aim was true and rather than shattering into a thousand dangerous shard, the lid was forced upwards and a web of cracks forked its way down the side of jar. The glass split, huge chunks of it fall away from the impact the knight had made until the jar collapsed and Void splashed out over the stone floor, spilling Quirrel out along with it.

The knight immediately rushed to Quirrel’s side, splashing through the seeping pools of darkness, and gave the bug’s shell a light, if frantic, series of pats. Quirrel pushed himself to his hands and knees, Void seeping out of the gaps in his shell and dripping in little streams from his body. He shook himself and sat back, a hand to his head, and looked at the knight with an expression of relief and exhaustion,

“Thank you, little one, it shames me to admit it but I doubt I would have been able to escape that on my own. Though perhaps if we ever find ourselves in such a situation again, we could find a less…chaotic solution to freeing me, yes?” The knight only tilted their head, keeping their hand on Quirrel’s arm as if afraid he would disappear again. Quirrel chuckled weakly, and cupped the back of the knight’s head with one hand. The knight could feel it tremble slightly against his carapace, “Well, I suppose what really matters is that you freed me. And I am very grateful for that. I owe you my life, brave knight.”

The knight still felt a ferocious biting heat inside them, but it was tempered by something profoundly soft and warm, something as soothing as looking out upon the stillness of the Blue Lake. In an act they had seen other bugs perform (and had experienced themselves once or twice but never initiated) the knight put their arms around as much of Quirrel as they possibly could—which wasn’t much, given their small stature—and gave the bigger bug a gentle squeeze. Quirrel made a small noise of surprise and then, after a moment, he put his arms around the little knight and held them close. It was a moment of peaceful silence, similar to the one they had shared at the Blue Lake, comforting and calm, with many things said without any words being exchanged whatsoever. 

A crash from above made them pull apart and look towards the darkened ceiling, though Quirrel kept a hand on the knight’s back.

“Perhaps we should find our way out of here,” Quirrel said. He dropped a hand to his side, fingers curling in the air as he naturally reached for his nail. When his hand closed on nothing, he glanced down and then back up again, “Though I’m afraid that I will be of little help in our escape without my weapon.”

The little knight looked Quirrel up and down, took in the black staining half of his carapace, the faint quiver in his limbs, the tired slump of his entire body. Then they grabbed Quirrel’s hand in their own and readied their nail, drawing themself up as much as they could, stoking that hot fire that was still burning inside them. 

They would get Quirrel safely out of the Tower.

And they would make sure the Collector paid dearly for what it had done.

**Author's Note:**

> I was going to write more, including the return fight against The Collector and Quirrel getting a hit in on it for poetic justice and then the knight taking Quirrel to a hot spring so he can wash the Void off and get better. But it just wasn't flowing well. So you can just imagine it happened and feel warm thoughts about it.


End file.
